Conspicuously bereft of the phony magic that accompanied him on his 2008 trip, he told a shrinking German audience that climate change is "the global threat of our time." This national-sovereignty-eschewing executive of the world said: "With a global middle class consuming more energy every day, this must now be an effort of all nations, not just some, for the grim alternative affects all nations. More severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise -- this is the future we must avert."

Yes, global warming, er, climate change is conveniently apocalyptic, because it is flexible enough to accommodate any and all disastrous events -- natural or man-made, weather-related or otherwise, and events that are completely contradictory. The theory is broad enough that it can never be discredited, even if its proponents are caught scandalously manipulating the data. If we have more tornadoes and hurricanes or fewer, if we have milder summers and winters or harsher ones, if the Earth has been cooling for the past 15 years and even if bitter clingers are stockpiling AK-47s at an unprecedented degree, you can be darn sure global warming is the culprit. So of course it's the most pressing problem of our time.

In fact, if we would just tame this dread monster, we wouldn't need religion anymore, because man and nature would have achieved perfectibility. Of course, for global warming zealots, environmentalism is the one true religion, and faith in God (save Gaia) is passe. [Via Climate Change Dispatch]